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From Infection to Access: A 24-Hour Timeline of a Modern Stealer Campaign. Stealer malware no longer just steals passwords. In 2025, it steals live sessions—and attackers are moving faster and more efficiently than ever. While many associate account takeovers with personal services, the real threat is unfolding in the enterprise. Flare's latest research, The Account and Session Takeover Economy, analyzed over 20 million stealer logs and tracked attacker activity across Telegram channels and dark web marketplaces. The findings expose how cybercriminals weaponize infected employee endpoints to hijack enterprise sessions—often in less than 24 hours. Here's the real timeline of a modern session hijacking attack. Infection and Data Theft in Under an Hour Once a victim runs a malicious payload—typically disguised as cracked software, fake updates, or phishing attachments—commodity stealers like Redline (44% of logs), Raccoon (25%), and LummaC2 (18%) take over. These malware kits: Session Tokens: The New Currency Within hours, cybercriminals sift through stolen data, focusing on high-value session tokens: Using Telegram bot commands, attackers filter logs by geography, application, and privilege level. Marketplace listings include browser fingerprint data and ready-made login scripts that bypass MFA. Pricing for stolen sessions varies widely, with consumer accounts typically selling for $5 to $20, while enterprise-level AWS or Microsoft sessions can fetch $1,200 or more. Full Account Access Within Hours Once session tokens are purchased, attackers import them into anti-detect browsers, gaining seamless access to business-critical platforms without triggering MFA or login alerts. This isn't about personal accounts being misused. It's about attackers infiltrating corporate environments, where they quickly: Flare analyzed a single stealer log that included live, ready-to-use access to Gmail, Slack, Microsoft 365, Dropbox, AWS, and PayPal—all tied to a single infected machine. In the wrong hands, this level of session access can escalate into a serious breach within hours. Why This Matters: The Scale of the Threat This is no outlier. It is a massive, industrialized underground market enabling ransomware gangs, fraudsters, and espionage groups: These attacks don't result from breaches at Microsoft, Google, AWS, or other service providers. Instead, they stem from individual users getting infected by stealer malware, which silently exfiltrates their credentials and live session tokens. Attackers then exploit this user-level access to impersonate employees, steal data, and escalate privileges. According to Verizon's 2025 DBIR, 88% of breaches involved stolen credentials, highlighting just how central identity-based attacks have become. If you're only watching for stolen passwords or failed login attempts, you're missing the biggest attack vector. How to Defend Your Organization Session tokens are as critical as passwords and require a new defense mindset: Adapting defenses to this new reality is essential for stopping fast-moving threat actors. Dive Deeper with Flare Our full report covers: Explore our extensive dataset yourself by starting a free trial. Search millions of stealer logs, identify exposed sessions, and get ahead of attackers. Read the full report | Start your free trial Note: This article is expertly written and contributed by Eric Clay, who has experience in governance, risk and compliance, security data analysis, and security research. He currently serves as the CMO at Flare, a Threat Exposure Management SaaS solution.